Omaawamji’idiwag zhigo maanji-omashkawaag

Colonization, Settlement and Housing

The effect of and continuing colonization of Indigenous peoples can be traced as an underlying force in the development of housing and neighbourhoods that do not meet the unique cultural needs of Indigenous peoples. Permanent housing in Canada has been developed in a largely Eurocentric paradigm based off the needs and desires of the non-indigenous population. This reality is the result of the process of totalization.1 Totalization is the assimilatory process of commodification, objectification and assimilation experienced by Indigenous peoples articulated in the works of Peter Kulchyski. He developed his understanding of totalization through the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Nicos Poulantzas, among others. Kulchyski defines totalization as a state driven process to bring social groups into the dominant social formation, capitalist production.2 This requires a reshaping of their society both in terms of material change and transformations in consciousness.3

The present capitalist-industrial economy requires settled life; accumulation beyond subsistence in general requires settled life. This mode of production is based upon sedentary existence. Preceding colonization, the vast majority of Indigenous peoples in the land that became Canada enacted a ceremonial and productive cycle4 that relied upon a non-sedentary form of production. Materially it was the state that generally relocated and settled Indigenous peoples such as the Inuit into homes and locations that were based on a new mode of production. The state-sponsored settlement pattern was chosen and developed to be convenient for the state and its economic priorities and interests. Settlement was based on the values and culture of Euro-Canadians.5 Similarly, it was the state that funded the transformation of consciousness that came from the criminalization of ceremonies and the forced internment in residential schools.6 In the Canadian context, colonization is the process of preparing for and maintaining the necessary context for capitalist accumulation.7 Colonization can be understood in the Marxist terms of primitive accumulation or enclosure,8 both historically based ideas of how capitalist markets are created, although these terms to not express the breadth of the process of colonization.

Capitalist settled life was predicated on a change in household production9 in Indigenous societies from extended kinship networks to nuclear family reproduction transformed through the introduction of European hetero-patriarchy, the domination of men and privileging of heterosexuality. European-derived patriarchy is one of the fundamental bases of the holistic colonization of Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island.10 This process of re-ordering gender-relationships is not to unique to the colonization of the Americas but has also been documented by numerous Maori scholars in their works on Aotearoa.11 When planning housing it is often assumed that all inhabitants will have a household of the European-derived patriarchal model, otherwise known as a hetero-normative family. Much of the literature on Indigenous housing use proves otherwise, that some Indigenous peoples still retain a unique spatial use due to their preferences related to kinship and family structure and its effect on household production. The home and neighbourhood are the site of the family and therefore integral to both colonization and decolonization. If a home is not designed for the needs of Indigenous peoples it spatially supports European-derived lifestyles over that of Indigenous peoples. Simply put it gives the spatial advantage to the maintenance of colonization.

The results of colonization, thus far, have been decisive. Leroy Little Bear describes the results of colonization as follows:

Colonization created a fragmentary worldview among Aboriginal peoples. By force, terror, and educational policy, it attempted to destroy the Aboriginal worldview – but failed. Instead, colonization left a heritage of jagged worldviews among Indigenous peoples. They no longer had an Aboriginal worldview, nor did they adopt a Eurocentric worldview. Their consciousness became a random puzzle, a jigsaw puzzle that each person has to attempt to understand. Many collective views of the world competed for control of their behaviour, and since none was dominant modern Aboriginal people had to make guesses or choices about everything. Aboriginal consciousness became a site of overlapping, contentious, fragmented, competing desires and values.12

Little Bear argues there are fragmentary worldviews where there once was unity. He posits that colonized consciousness competes with Indigenous worldviews when Indigenous people make social decisions. The same can be seen to happen when governments and social agencies make decisions for Indigenous peoples. Little Bear’s comments however seem to suggest colonization is over and the results have been tabulated, rather than colonization being a process that is reaffirmed with every decision that supports European-derived worldviews and institutions. If one understands colonization as an ongoing process, it becomes easier to understand how not developing culturally appropriate housing can be a barrier to Indigenous cultural revitalization. Taiaiake Alfred argues in his book Wasáse, that defaulting or accepting European-derived cultural practices without critically evaluating whether or not they lead to the end result of Indigenous self-determination and cultural revitalization is a form of self-termination of indigenity. He calls this form of self-defeat and acceptance of colonization aboriginalism.13 Both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples can be aboriginalists when they make choices that consequentially undermine Indigenous peoples, whether through processes or results. Seeing this reality requires the researcher, the civil servant, the community activist, or the citizen to prevent oneself from relying on seeing with their imperial eyes,14 and have empathy for those Indigenous peoples attempting to maintain and revitalize their cultures in an urban context.

8 Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1: a Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, New York: International Publishers, 1967, pg. 762-763. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, Boston: Beacon Press, 2000, pg. 17-20. John S. Milloy, A National Crime: the Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879-1986, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999, pg. 13.

9Household production is the labour and reproduction in the home that allows other modes of the social relations of production to exist. According to Cox all societies are at least the combination (or social formation) of household production and one other mode of the social relations of production. Pre-contact Indigenous societies were according to Cox based on the relationship between household and subsistence production. Changes in this mode of production are perceived as changes in family structure. Robert W. Cox, Production, Power, and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History, New York: Columbia University Press, 1987, pg. 48-50.

10 Karen Anderson, Chain Her by One Foot: the Subjugation of Women in Seventeenth-Century New France, New York: Routledge,1991. pg. 192-195. Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women the Body and Primitive Accumulation, Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2004, pg. 97-100. Andrea Smith, Conquest: Sexual Violence and the American Indian Genocide, Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2005, pg. 12-17. Smith Andrea, “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy: Rethinking Women of Color Organizing”, from Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, Color of Violence: the Incite! Anthology, Cambridge, Mass: South End Press, 2006, pg. 71-73.

14 ‘Imperial eyes’ is a phrased used by Linda Tuhiwai Smith in to describe how western researchers rely on their specific values, customs and prejudices when studying Indigenous peoples. She articulates that the way the west sees Indigenous peoples is developed out of a cultural archived that developed with imperialism and colonization. See Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, New York: Zed Books, 1999, pg. 42-45, 60.